As part of its announcements on Tuesday, Apple released its official system requirements for Mac OS X Leopard and the software's associated applications. Meanwhile, upgrade options for recent Mac buyers and other discount details have been published.

Apple has confirmed Leopard's revised system requirements -- which exclude 800MHz G4 Macs -- and were detailed earlier by AppleInsider. They are:

Customers who purchase a qualifying new Macintosh computer on or after October 1, 2007 that does have not Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard included can upgrade to Leopard for $9.95 through Apple's Mac OS X Leopard Up-to-Date Program.

If you purchased multiple qualifying systems on a single invoice, you can either (1) purchase a Single-User Upgrade Kit for each qualifying product, at a cost of US$9.95*; or (2) purchase fewer Single-User Upgrade Kits and request the Right to Copy for the remaining qualifying products.

The maximum number of Up-To-Date packages that can be qualified from one individual appears to be 20.

Discounts on Leopard

Apple is offering Mac OS X Leopard for $129 with free delivery on October 26. However, there are several other online retailers who likely will not charge you sales tax and are also advertising hefty discounts.

For instance, Amazon.com is offering an instant $20 off Leopard, bringing the price down to $109.

MacMall is also offering $20 off the single license ($109) and $10 off the 5-seat family pack ($189). However, presently MacMall's website has the wrong pricing for Leopard and is offering the single license version for $20 off an incorrect retail price of $109, bringing the total down to $89. It's possible that MacMall may honor that price for readers who act quickly but it is not a certainty.

(Update: MacMall has corrected its error, the discounted price is back to $109).

Well some phone wrangling with the customer support people, and I was able to get one to send me a rebate form. On it, it just says that the item must be purchased by today, and doesn't mention price. MacMall has updated their price, but the rebate should still work, getting you the $89 price.

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by FlyinRyan View Post
The Apple Store for Education online is quoting me $116 for a single user and $199 for a family pack. I should call MacMall...
Yeah, I saw that too. A whopping $13 educational discount. OS X Tiger was something like $69 after the educational discount. Hopefully this is an error on Apple's part.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmjoe

Yeah, I saw that too. A whopping $13 educational discount. OS X Tiger was something like $69 after the educational discount. Hopefully this is an error on Apple's part.

This may help (posted from the earlier Leopard thread):

RE: Education Discount Pricing Change
You may still be able to get the old $69 educational discount price for Leopard, but you *need* to call your local Apple educational sales representative. I just did, and got it pre-ordered for $69. The woman I spoke with didn't even know about the $116 pricing for individual students and educators.

In speaking with my Apple rep, I told her I wouldn't mind the price increase so much...if the *retail* price had also jumped up $47. Then I would understand. This is just a $13 savings over retail...big deal. You can get a better price break buying it retail from MacMall.com for $109 and free shipping right now {EDIT TO ADD: Now Amazon.com, too}

From my perspective, it just sounded like students and educators were taking somewhat of a hit, regardless of how "great" 10.5 is supposed to be. Let's face it: every OS upgrade has had a lot of time and expense put into it. Again, I wouldn't mind the $116 price tag, if the regular retail price had increased by the same rate proportionally. But it didn't, and that's what didn't sit right with me. Or, just come out and say "no more educator discounts" and be honest about it from the get go. If educators have to pony up more because of the over 300 new great features...why not spread the pain to retail customers too?

Anyway, if you're an educator or a student, call your Apple Education rep directly and express your feelings about this. You may just get Leopard for $69 after all. Or just go to MacMall (or now Amazon) and save yourself some bucks there!

Originally Posted by FlyinRyan View Post
The Apple Store for Education online is quoting me $116 for a single user and $199 for a family pack. I should call MacMall...
Yeah, I saw that too. A whopping $13 educational discount. OS X Tiger was something like $69 after the educational discount. Hopefully this is an error on Apple's part.

This may help (posted from the earlier Leopard thread):

RE: Education Discount Pricing Change
You may still be able to get the old $69 educational discount price for Leopard, but you *need* to call your local Apple educational sales representative. I just did, and got it pre-ordered for $69. The woman I spoke with didn't even know about the $116 pricing for individual students and educators.

In speaking with my Apple rep, I told her I wouldn't mind the price increase so much...if the *retail* price had also jumped up $47. Then I would understand. This is just a $13 savings over retail...big deal. You can get a better price break buying it retail from MacMall.com for $109 and free shipping right now {EDIT TO ADD: Now Amazon.com, too}

From my perspective, it just sounded like students and educators were taking somewhat of a hit, regardless of how "great" 10.5 is supposed to be. Let's face it: every OS upgrade has had a lot of time and expense put into it. Again, I wouldn't mind the $116 price tag, if the regular retail price had increased by the same rate proportionally. But it didn't, and that's what didn't sit right with me. Or, just come out and say "no more educator discounts" and be honest about it from the get go. If educators have to pony up more because of the over 300 new great features...why not spread the pain to retail customers too?

Anyway, if you're an educator or a student, call your Apple Education rep directly and express your feelings about this. You may just get Leopard for $69 after all. Or just go to MacMall (or now Amazon) and save yourself some bucks there!

Agreed. It is a tad silly when the educational price discount is so weak it can't even match the Amazon price. \

My first generation Macbook Pro, that I bought less than 1 and a half year ago, is not even listed on the up-to-date qualifying computers page. Does it mean I can't install leopard, altough I have an Intel processor and 1,5 GB RAM? Can anyone shine a light on this?

My first generation Macbook Pro, that I bought less than 1 and a half year ago, is not even listed on the up-to-date qualifying computers page. Does it mean I can't install leopard, altough I have an Intel processor and 1,5 GB RAM? Can anyone shine a light on this?

My first generation Macbook Pro, that I bought less than 1 and a half year ago, is not even listed on the up-to-date qualifying computers page. Does it mean I can't install leopard, altough I have an Intel processor and 1,5 GB RAM? Can anyone shine a light on this?

You have to have been a Windows user at one time... They specs aren't on the Up-To-Date page, thats to see if you get the $9.99 upgrade...

I have the a 1.2 GHz iBook with 1.25 GB RAM its showing its age, I think I'm upgrading within the next 6 months.

I'm going to guess the answer is "no", but for those of you familiar with Boot Camp's XP SP2 requirement...does it have to be an SP2 install disc? Or can I install the earlier version XP from the disc I have and then install the SP2 update?

Yeah, I saw that too. A whopping $13 educational discount. OS X Tiger was something like $69 after the educational discount. Hopefully this is an error on Apple's part.

Yes, it's extremely disappointing. They seemed to have moved the roughly 10% education discount for hardware over to software as well.

Educational institutions can apparently still buy it for $69, so you may be able to get it through them.

Apple doesn't really check educational status. Maybe too many people were taking advantage of that? The counter then would be well why wouldn't apple just put in some safeguards, rather than just taking the good discount away.

Checking Leopard's iSync page, it doesn't look like Apple add very many (if any at all) new phones to the list of supported devices. Makes me wonder if iSync (the application, not the Sync Services framework) is going to be just another in the long line of cool technologies that Apple has abandoned. Ever since contact/calendar-to-iPod syncing was taken over by iTunes, it seems that iSync has been stagnant.

UGH. Are you kidding me? This has been touted as a built-in feature since day one, and now it's no different from Tiger's Front Row in being limited solely to those machines that shipped with it? So after all this time and paying $130, we'll STILL have to use hacks just to run it on a pre-Oct 2005 machine, despite the fact that it works fine from the keyboard or with an alternate remote? What a load of...

My first generation Macbook Pro, that I bought less than 1 and a half year ago, is not even listed on the up-to-date qualifying computers page. Does it mean I can't install leopard, altough I have an Intel processor and 1,5 GB RAM? Can anyone shine a light on this?

What I don't get with Apple and MacMall is both say order for delivery on Oct 26th but do you have to choose the most expensive overnight shipping to actually receive it on Oct 26th? Amazon says this product ships on Oct. 26th.

I'm going to guess the answer is "no", but for those of you familiar with Boot Camp's XP SP2 requirement...does it have to be an SP2 install disc? Or can I install the earlier version XP from the disc I have and then install the SP2 update?

The answer to your question is YES. It MUST be an XP SP2 installation CD. An XP or XP SP1 CD will not understand the Boot Camp partition scheme correctly, and you might lose data.